Musings Of A New Southern Man

I knew it was coming because the weather radar showed big areas of red and yellow nearby. That meant heavy rain (and possibly heavier rain) along with thunder and lightning. I walked out to our screen porch and pulled up a rocking chair so I could witness the show. It was tame when I arrived. The only sign of pending trouble was a darkening sky as thick clouds gathered. The actual storm started gently with a slight breeze that ruffled leaves on the stand of tall trees behind our home. I could imagine that breeze swaying palm trees on a tropical beach rather than sweet gums and poplars. That breeze turned into a solid wind. The bigger trees nearer our home simply had the upper branches moved, but the spindly young trees at the back of the lot started moving back and forth like a collection of drinking straws swaying to the music. The dark clouds huddled closer. The wind changed identity and became a small gale. The young trees were bending deeper toward the ground with each curren...

The route to get to where we built our new home is Manse Jolly Road. I figured this Jolly fella was a former civic official or rich guy, the kind who usually have roads named after them. Turns out Jolly is one of those figures that reminds me that I am in a Confederate state that was bound and determined to split from those Yankees and form their own nation. Manson Jolly was a young man from Anderson who went off to fight for the South in the Civil War. So did five of his brothers. Manse was a member of the South Carolina cavalry and made it through the war. None of his brothers did. Four died on the battlefield and the fifth by other means. Manse returned to Anderson to find his family decimated by the horrors of war. To make matters worse, those Northerners were occupying his hometown. Times were tough for Southern families who routinely had whatever crops or animals they raised taken by the Union soldiers. Manse didn't take kindly to that and became a trained horse soldier ben...

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. Yes, my brother Steve had health problems for years. Nothing indicated that he was so close to the time of his passing. There were no messages or warnings. We were caught off-guard. I have spent considerable time weighing the impact. There is so much information and emotional baggage to weigh. I have found few answers, only more questions. I won't detail those here. The only certainty I have reached is this: Steve's death affects me most because he was of my generation, the first family member of the younger set to pass away. That brings the reality of mortality that much closer. I wrote in one of my novels of a man explaining why he made death such a major factor in his writing. (There is nothing autobiographical in this, by the way.) His point was that most death doesn't affect us much. We read or hear about deaths of many people by many means, but those deaths don't hurt us because we don't know.these people. The ...

Goodbye literary angle. Hello commentaries on daily life. Welcome to this son of eastern Oregon becoming a transplanted son of the Deep South, with intervening times in northern California wine country and the Front Range of Colorado. It's not as tough a transition as one might believe. I was getting a haircut a few weeks ago in my new hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, and I was wearing a T-shirt with a big yellow O on it. A young man in the chair as I waited my turn said, "Oh, you must be a fan of the Oregon Ducks." I hurried My  to correct him. "No, I am a Duck, an official graduate of the University of Oregon." He smiled and continued the conversation. "Being here must be a culture shock, this being the South and all." I had to correct him again. "I was raised in eastern Oregon, in an area where many people work in cherry orchards or on wheat ranches. It's not the Portlandia view of the state. People tend to be conservative, and they ...

Every author has a central focus in stories they write. Some love vampires or zombies. Others swoon for those caught in romantic dilemmas. Each has a delicious range of possibilities. None of those appeal to me. I am a former journalist, so it is a rational path I've traveled from the stories I've written or edited over the years to this: #PerilOnYourStreet I covered a story of multiple murders by a mother on her family members. I covered more auto accidents than I care to remember. I wrote about fires that threatened homes, relatives who threatened relatives, and bosses who threatened employees. Those had a common denominator. Each could have happened in your home or neighborhood. I write novels in which the time is now, and the place cis just down the street from where you live. Even my lone self-published novel has that trait. One Summer Season: A Young Man's Brutal Baptism Into Love And Baseball had its genesis in my coverage of Class A, short-season baseball whil...

Moving into a new home is never easy. It ruins routines, adds pressure that has no business being so dominant in my life, and disrupts any social activity. Maybe most damaging of all is that it trashes an author's schedule. Revisions on my novel sat idle for slightly more than a month. I prefer to write on my PC, but I was limited to my laptop. I thought the time between writing sessions would be much shorter, but weather (too many nights of below-freezing temperatures) delayed our move-in date because it delayed the installation of our driveway. No driveway, no installation of carpeting. No carpeting, no final inspection from the county. No inspection, no chance to do our move-in. Longtime Anderson residents said they never saw such a protracted cold spell. The weather finally broke, but everyone with a delayed concrete project demanded action. The first warmer day went by without a new driveway. Our builder finagled a way to get on the second-day pouring schedule, but we had to...

There is no more important part of the writing process than revisions. It's nice to have a basic story line that shines through on the first draft. That won't carry the freight. What a good novel becomes is based on the amount of hammering you do to subject matter and characters, and how honest you are with your work in pursuit of your goals. Be ruthless. Have no pet ideas. Don't fear those times you know you must tear up chapters. There is a caveat. Make sure your characters' reactions make sense as you lead them through the development of the character arc. Keep them real amid the chaos. The best piece of advice I got from my first-draft beta readers was that one character's reaction to a major plot point didn't make sense. My main female character just had an event of shattering importance, but I had her sharing a laugh with her partner a short time later. Sorry, but that didn't fit the events, and I didn't write it as if it happened simply as an ...